


I've been ashamed

by lulapeers



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Canon, F/M, M/M, Stream of consciousness kind of thing, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 12:37:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10764417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulapeers/pseuds/lulapeers
Summary: He thinks he just glosses over his memories, that he just likes to think he’d had it all figured out then, before his brain started to go to shit for real. He knows it’s not logically possible. These days even the guys one year under him at school seem like children, and most of them are legally allowed to vote. There’s one thing which never needed to be glossed over though. Sonja.





	I've been ashamed

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Michael Kiwanuka's Cold Little Heart.  
> This is more about Sonja and Even's relationship than it is about Isak.  
> Also English isn't my native language so hopefully there's no horrendous mistake in there. Feel free to give feedback !

Even was fourteen when he first laid eyes on Sonja. There was something intimidating about her that was a first. He’d never really had many crushes, but when he had, he’d mostly relied on his wit. He knew his classmates thought he was a bit weird, sometimes too over-the-top sociable and sometimes in his head too deep, but girls tended to find it charming. Like they’d watched too many romcoms and saw him as some kind of potential mystery to solve. Or, as much of a mystery as a fourteen-year-old boy could be, anyway. He liked the idea though. Fancied himself more profound than he really was. It’s not like your dating life is very serious when you’re fourteen anyway, it’s not like you have the ability to get that deep. He knows he wasn’t some kind of misunderstood soul, just a kid who thought he might be special.  
He thinks he just glosses over his memories, that he just likes to think he’d had it all figured out then, before his brain started to go to shit for real. He knows it’s not logically possible. These days even the guys one year under him at school seem like children, and most of them are legally allowed to vote. There’s one thing which never needed to be glossed over though; Sonja.

  
He’d been weirdly enamoured before they’d ever even talked, had watched her laugh and speak for ages to friends who actually listened to her in a way that was rare amongst teens. He’d heard her debate with some on a weekly basis and he’d loved how unapologetically opinionated she was at an age when the trend was to conform. He’d seen her through admiration-riddled glasses. She’d been the one to come to him. Had caught him looking a few times too many and had asked him what his problem was. He might have fallen in love there and then.

  
He’d been feeling like he was losing his head for a while then. Like pastels had disappeared from the world around him only to be replaced with bright neons and his eyes got so tired from the brightness they would fill with black after a while. Sometimes everything was Sonja Sonja Sonja and sometimes it felt like his brain was trying to formulate a thought but it would take hours and hours for it to get translated into words. And then everything would be fine again, colours would go back to normal and his thoughts fell back into place and he would forget about it for a while. Sometimes it wouldn’t even be a conscious choice, sometimes it felt like he’d just woken up from a foggy dream, like the ones you feel like you have to write down first thing in the morning but you forget all about once you hold a pen in your hand. Like you’re keeping secrets from yourself.

  
Sonja had been his perfect match. She’d been in the revue with him, they’d had the same friends and the same interests. The same love for movies and people and feelings and cheesy romance. The same forgetfulness for acceptable conduct in public, the same adoration for one another. More than adoration, pride. He’d been diagnosed at a stage where she could have easily left him. They’d been together for a while then, almost a year, but they were barely sixteen and just so immature. Teenage romances rarely last over a few months, let alone a year. He’d been terrified she would give up on him though. She was the closest thing he’d had then, they had slowly formed a world around them, brought their friends together, their families even.

  
She stayed, of course she did. She didn’t even blink much of an eye, just took in the information and accepted it as the perfect justification for the way he would get sometimes. He realises now that she'd felt relieved. She was probably so glad that there was an explanation for how intense he could be, for how sad he would get. For all the bits she didn’t like much about him, but felt so guilty about. Together, they'd turned his illness into the enemy. His episodes into moments of weakness in a forever ongoing battle. He thinks he’d needed that at the time, to dissociate himself from his disorder, to distance his true self from his out-of-control brain. He wasn’t ready to try and work with what he’d been given, hadn’t felt like any part of it was also a part of him. She’d been so good to him as well. She was funny, Sonja. She got his sense of humour like no one else, and they’d grown up alongside one another, had been through so many of the same challenges that he felt like she was as much a part of his being as he was. They’d grown into these humanoids that weren’t quite Even nor Sonja but met somewhere in the middle. Like they didn’t get to have their own identities anymore, like their lives had merged into one. Like they were discount ‘2 for the price of one’ packs of pasta at the store and they were stuck into a package deal.

 

He had been terrible to her in the end. He resented her so much for the way she cared for him, for the way she loved him when the only thing that was on his mind was how much he hated himself. They had dealt with the infamous episode of his final year at Bakka in different ways. He had distanced himself from many a friend, couldn’t face the look of horror he imagined they would wear. Sonja had refused to go any further than a step away. She’d stuck her nails deep into his skin and drawn blood.

 

He knows just how unjust he'd been with her. It wasn't her fault that they weren't in sync anymore. Most things he had once loved, needed even, turned into what he despised most about her. The way she cared for him at the top of the pile. There was once a time when he'd needed her to tell him he was fine, he would be fine, she would make him be fine. She'd kept him safe and loved and secure for so long. But slowly, he'd grown out of her hold, had begun to crave emancipation.

 

He hates that he hurt her the way he did, hates the way he described her to Isak. Like she was a manipulating bitch and didn’t respect him or something, like she didn't treat him as a human being. He’d let his resentment talk himself into hating her, had subconsciously tried to push Isak into detesting her to validate his hatred. The truth is, Sonja was one the best thing that ever happened to him. But then he’d met Isak, and he’d been just that much more attuned to the person Even was becoming without as much of Sonja at his side. Like the way his life got stuck into another cycle of the same for a year while Sonja went on to mature and grow led to the dissociation of their merged beings. Like the package deal got broken and they got put back on different shelves.  
Still. Sonja knows a version of him no one ever will. She will forever keep four years of him sealed in her memories, that version of Even forever exists, just like he finally got to a point where he could cherish her the way he’d forgotten how to.

  
It really didn’t take that long for him to miss her. He still resents that somewhat. Like a part of him was left to rot, lost without its other half while the bits and pieces Isak claimed as his were glowing with fulfillment. He fears he’ll end up losing pieces of himself with each new person he gets to love and leave. Maybe that’s why you die when you do, maybe all those parts of yourself that belong to the people you’ve lost thrive for you to get lost alongside them.


End file.
